Allison Pinto

Hi, I’m Allison.  Over time, my personal, neighbor, and professional identities have become so interconnected, it is a challenge to speak to each realm separately!  Here’s a try:  

As an everyday person, I’m an explorer and aspiring inventor, an optimist (generally!), and a grappler.  I’m a life partner, a daughter, an auntie, and more recently a grandmother.  I’m a middle-aged white, non-Hispanic, cisgender straight woman who is a U.S. citizen and is monolingual English-speaking, raised in the Episcopal church, and of a family and community that is increasingly diverse.  Over the past 15 years I have felt the greatest sense of belonging and community attachment in the neighborhoods where I have lived, which are predominantly Black neighborhoods in Florida. I know that each of these aspects of my identity has implications for how I express myself, take action and am experienced by other people in the world today. I also am reminded of the wisdom of James Baldwin, who said, “Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one’s nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one’s nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one’s robes.”    

As a neighbor, I now live in the Bayou Oaks neighborhood of Sarasota, Florida.  I love that it is an “intersectional” neighborhood, where the winding bayou, tree canopies and birdsong of Old Florida co-exist with the train tracks, flight paths, and bus routes of the city.  I love that it is a neighborhood with a “high diversity index,” where there’s a high chance of crossing paths with someone of a different racial or ethnic identity than one’s own.  And I love that it’s part of Newtown, the Black community of Sarasota, with its warm and welcoming nature, rich history, and an enduring tradition of social justice.  As a fellow neighbor, I connect through everyday walks, exchanging backyard fruits and vegetables, celebrating holidays together, and collaborating in solidarity, both to strengthen our shared sense of belonging and to improve the ways that residents are treated by local institutions and systems.  

As a professional, I have devoted my efforts over the past 25 years to transformative community change initiatives, with an emphasis on children’s mental health.  In terms of my “field of origin,” I earned a Ph.D. in clinical child psychology at UCLA, with a post-doctoral specialization in Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health.  I started my career in California, where I worked primarily as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, and then designed and directed clinical and training programs in community mental health. 

When I moved to Florida in 2004, I transitioned to a focus on the “macro” scale of community, serving on the faculty of University of South Florida to work with communities across the country that were creating Systems of Care for Children’s Mental Health, and serving on the ZERO TO THREE training taskforce to work with communities that were developing cross-sector Infant Mental Health initiatives.  I then co-developed and co-led a “communiplexity” initiative, working with neighbors and cross-sector professionals in Hillsborough and Sarasota counties, together with faculty and students at USF, to translate the theory and practice of complexity science to better understand and navigate community.  I also developed and directed neighborhood initiatives and community data collaboratives through SCOPE, a nonprofit community engagement organization.  

Over time, I came to believe that the people whose decisions and actions most significantly influence the well-being of children and communities are…no surprise…children and neighbors themselves!  

This led to reinventing myself as a neighbor-professional.   By opening my home and being present on the block, I was able to team up with and follow the lead of “neighborkids” – children, mostly ages three to ten, who explore and share all the things to love about their neighborhood, inventing new traditions and creating community together. Examples include neighborhood scavenger hunts, “neighborbaby” welcome baskets, and baking pecan pie together on MLK’s birthday. These efforts are not just fun, but powerful means of building community, and have initiated collaboration resulting in changes to library policies, public parks, and more.  

Over the past 15 years, my efforts have been focused on new forms of community organizing and changemaking, integrating insights and practices from the fields of infant mental health, complexity, and community science.  I have emphasized teaming up with neighbors, who in turn invite organizations and philanthropies to collaborate in creating resident-led place-based initiatives and community collaboratives.  This has included facilitating initiatives in my own home neighborhoods in Sarasota and St. Petersburg, and in the rural community of Wimauma, Florida.  I have served as a reflective consultant/companion for place-based practitioners and the directors of Place-Based Initiatives in other communities, and facilitated the development of collaborations involving local communities and statewide agencies.      

In relation to philanthropy, I have worked with various communities interested in forming resource and funding collaboratives as components of their local efforts while I was based in nonprofit, university, and government (children’s services council) settings, and as an independent consultant.  My interests are the psychology of philanthropy and belonging, as well as asset-based and community-led approaches.  I value the ways that philanthropy can contribute to increasing equity and equality, which in turn can bring about collective thriving.